Excited about Eich

I’m excited that Brendan Eich is Mozilla’s CEO. Brendan knows what’s important right now: building the values of the web into mobile and into the cloud at a massive scale. This vision is key to our success. But Brendan also offers something else: a real example of how we can each roll up our sleeves to tackle the hard, messy problems that we need to solve if we want to make this vision into a reality.

When I first came to Mozilla, I was a little starstruck. Here was an organization that had rallied a global community to build Firefox and beat Microsoft. An organization that had made open source — and many of the ideas behind it — mainstream. An organization filled with internet rock stars like Brendan. People who have changed the world, for real.

What I realized quickly: Mozillians are just everyday people. What makes them special is their particular ideas about how to make things happen in the world. Ideas like: build your vision and values into products that lots of people will want to use. And, find leverage, create standards and nurture relationships that help these products shape whole industries. And, do these things by empowering people and inviting them to help you out. Mozilla has won in the past because its people had been smart, tenacious and committed to this particular brand of poetry and pragmatism.

Working with Brendan over the years, I saw someone who everyday personified this Mozilla way of working. Think about Javascript as an example. Most of you probably know that Brendan invented Javascript. But what you might not know is how hard he worked worked internally at Netscape and Mozilla to put Javascript into products that millions of people would use. Or how he collaborated with competitors like Microsoft and Google. Or how he’s worked on standards. Or how much time he’s taken to speak to and inspire developers at events on every corner of the planet. Code matters in the history of Javascript. But so does leadership, business and alliance building. Brendan worked on all of these things over the years, turning Javascript from an idea into a programming language that is used widely and freely everywhere around the world to build the web.

In my opinion, this way of working is something we need more of at Mozilla right now. See the big picture. Roll up our sleeves. Pick the right battles. Make the right compromises. Figure out all the different kinds of things we need to do to win. And help each other out to get these things done.

I truly think Brendan can help us all do more of this right now. He’s already started with Firefox OS, not only leading us to build a compelling product in a few short years but also playing an active role in helping carriers and device manufacturers become partners contributing to Mozilla’s cause. Like always, Brendan has helped us build not just a product but also platforms and relationships that have the potential to shift the whole playing field. As we tackle everything from cloud services to building up new revenue lines to teaching 100s millions of people about the web, I believe Brendan can help each be smart, tenacious, practical and open as we work on solving our particular piece of the open web puzzle.

I’m feeling hopeful and inspired today. I’m looking forward to working closely with Brendan as Mozilla’s new CEO. And to rolling up my sleeves even further to build the web we’re dreaming of. I hope you want to do the same.